Did you hear the one about the professional baseball team that named themselves after a serial killer who slit the throats of female prostitutes (prior to abdominal mutilations) back in the day?

This isn’t a joke. A London, Ontario based member of the Frontier League (not affiliated with Major League Baseball) named their team The Rippers… presumably after Jack the Ripper looking at their logo design. This has caused quite a bit of outrage by many including, Megan Walker, the director of a local London Abused Women’s Center stating, “People are outraged. I think it’s appalling. It’s insulting and stupid and they better rethink their entire marketing strategy”.

I can only imagine the marketing team’s response: “What? Too soon?”

The team name does not offend me personally (I actually kind of like it), but what does bother me is the way the marketing/design team decided to go forward with the name and logo design without listening to their client or doing any sort of market research. Their job is to stay focused on the client’s requirements by sticking to the brief.

This all being said, I will give the logo designer and marketing firm a few kudos:

If they wanted some free press to help promote the new baseball team, they got it.

The logo is awesome and I would buy their merchandise because of the controversy created over the design.

What do you think of the logo and naming? Distasteful? Or did these guys know what they were doing?

UPDATE…

I found this old Cracked article uncovering a few other controversial/hilarious/unfortunate/racist sports team names including: